I have been at Microsoft for just over 3 years now. One thing that I have learned is that when we are in full swing, the amount of balls in the air at any given time can be completely overwhelming.
One of my personal weaknesses has not only been my ability to juggle, but my ability to catch all of the balls before they hit the ground. Like most people, I am at my best when I am working on things I am very passionate about, but I become less and less efficient when dealing with things that don’t strike a chord with me personally.
In a collected attempt to remake myself for 2011, I reached out to a coworker who had a process that while I originally mocked it, seemed incredibly effective. Late last year, I sent him an email asking him to explain his process to me, and he responded with a meeting invite and came to my office to show me the ropes.
Kevin laid out a super simple plan that sounded too simple to actually work, but I guess sometimes the best things are. Here are basics:
Carry the index cards with you everywhere you go
This one was easy for me, all day I am usually wearing a hoodie or a jeans or something with pockets, I keep the a half dozen index cards and a pen handy at all times. When I head home, I slip them into an outside pocket on my backpack.
Only use one index card at a time
This one was counter intuitive at first, but in practice it’s an incredibly efficient way to keep yourself from over-committing or letting things pile up. The keys to the kingdom are right here if you ask me. When my card is getting too full, it’s time to make a decision, and there are only two options really. When I can’t seem to fit any more tasks, I need to either stop and knock out some things to get them off my plate, or I need to find a way to delegate or reset expectations for whomever might be depending on me to deliver something. I find myself regularly assessing what I have going on and prioritizing my day into manageable chunks now, and it’s been a huge help for me.
Try to keep a clean card
You might think that having a card full of crossed out things would make you feel like you are just killing it and getting everything done. Crossing things out definitely feels that way, but this step is important to me also. When I get to about 3 empty lines left, I stop and cross out what I have done, and rewrite the unfinished items on a new card. This accomplishes two things: rewriting tasks over and over is a personal nag to just bite the bullet and get it done and a cleaner, emptier card is kind of a mind hack to keep you from feeling overwhelmed. As soon as you start having to sort through crossed out items, or negotiate notes you made in the margins because you were short on room, you’re going down the wrong path.
Break work into manageable chunks
The last thing to mention is how you deal with both big and small tasks on the same card. I use the same card for all of my tasks, and I deal with them exactly the same way. The only difference is how I move forward with big, multi-step problems. This week I took on the task of writing a social media strategy for my team at work. A quick example of how I’ll use the index cards in this task is as follows:
Initially I’ll write “Social Media Plan” when I take on the task. I won’t remove that task from my card until I have effectively scoped what I want to accomplish and set a date for when I intend to deliver it.
I’ll schedule the meeting that I intend to use to present my plan, and break down all of the things I need to do to be prepared for that. I use OneNote for work projects, and I’ll create a notebook and write down all of the tasks I have decided I need to complete to be ready for my presentation.
Once I have the monster scoped, I’ll strike out “Social Media Plan” and write down the first task I need to complete on my index card. At this point it’s rinse and repeat until I have everything I need in place. At that point I might make a note on my card like “Review Plan with Manager.” So I don’t forget to get and incorporate feedback in my plan. Once I am finished with all the tasks and comfortable with the plan, I’ll present it, and follow the exact same process with implementing it.
Notice how I have never let one project dominate my card. It’s always a task I need to complete to make progress.
Closing the loop
Now that you have fixed your problems in getting things done, you can also fix how your coworkers perceive you and help them be more efficient as well. This is how to make sure your index card is helping the rest of your team. When you stop to take time to rewrite your card, also take time to send and email or phone call to the people related to the item you are not moving to the new card. That way people depending on you know that you have finished and they can move forward.
The Impact
As I have already mentioned, this little trick has changed my work life. I respond faster, I get more done, and people who count on me would probably tell you that I am much more reliable in general. Kevin gave me his technique, that he had taken an adapted from someone else. I am giving you mine that I have adapted from Kevin. If you are having trouble keeping yourself organized, this might just be the trick.
Don’t just take my word for it, this is what Kevin had to say when I asked him contribute to this post. One last thing, writing this blog post is on my index card, but not for long!
From Kevin:
The index card technique was introduced to me by my first manager here at Microsoft, Jim Rodrigues. When I first got re-orged into CRM , I found my scope of influence growing rapidly after finding myself in a mission critical role of ensuring builds come out on time and automation runs before most of the team comes into work. Unfortunately, my skills to cope with the increase of things to do did not grow at that same scale. As a result, I found myself with a lot of things going on and no system to ensure that I was delivering on them. It got very easy to get in the habit of doing a cursory job on anything that wasn’t an immediate fire drill, and because I wasn’t seeing things through to the finish I found that things would come back to haunt me.
This is some feedback I got verbatim in my review from 2004:
I love the enthusiasm and in the last few months I have seen you really driving for results. It’s not that you ever did not but now there is more determination than ever before. You are improving but I would still encourage you to think through a task to 100% completion as it really bugs me when I think we are done with something and then later discover there are issues that we really should have known of. I don’t have the bandwidth to hands on these items to make sure when we are saying we are done we have thought of everything so I need you and other senior leaders to ensure this.
While brainstorming strategies with Jim, he came up with the index card system to help keep me focused on what is important. It immediately helped by keeping the volume of work I commit to doing down to a manageable level. By acknowledging the fact that I can’t accommodate more work because I’m too busy, it helped me avoid overcommitting myself. And because the workload was manageable, I had the time and space to think through how to REALLY resolve a work item as opposed to just making it go away for the day. After using the system for a few months and resolving those repetitive, nagging issues in an orderly fashion, I found that I was getting large blocks of free time during the day, which I then in turn invested in increasing my scope of influence and ability to impact my work. Now I’m at the point where I have a pretty strong emotional connection with my cards and I actually feel happiness when I cross something off, especially something that I know is going to make a material difference in my world.
That’s straight from the horse’s mouth so to speak, and I am a true believer, it really works, ask my team.
was the top contender for price and performance so I started there. $200 wasn’t too unreasonable, so I did a little reading to make sure it was what I wanted and found something very interesting.
